A National Curriculum and Tests: Charting the Consequences

In 1974, I became superintendent of the Arlington, Va., public
schools. Shrinking enrollments and increasing numbers of minority
students had set off tremors in the community over falling test scores
and the perceived decline in academic quality of the schools.
Mainstream wisdom among federal policymakers then was that schools
don't make much of a difference in children's lives and that spending
money to improve schools was wasteful.

The Arlington school board resisted that gloomy "wisdom'' and made
changes. All courses of study, classroom materials (including texts),
tests, and staff evaluations were aligned with the school board's
instructional goals. School plans and accountability were stressed.

What happened? Scores on state-mandated tests rose each year in
elementary schools but less so at the secondary level. The achievement
gap between white and minority students narrowed in elementary schools
but stayed pretty much the same in secondary schools. Community
satisfaction with its schools climbed.

What happened in Arlington in the mid-1970's foreshadowed the
"effective schools'' movement that swept across the nation's big-city
schools in the next decade. The popular Nation at Risk report in 1983
borrowed the central beliefs of the movement and gave it a national
platform. Effective-schools principles became a national agenda: All
children can learn; schools must have high academic standards; for a
school to achieve its goals, texts, tests, and the curriculum must be
tightly coupled; and, finally, test scores will prove to a skeptical
public that schools are accountable.

Throughout the 1980's the movement for effective schools took hold
in the states and finally reached the White House, with President Bush
and 50 governors embracing the concept of national goals and
performance measurements in 1989. President Clinton's "goals 2000''
bill currently before Congress displays those common denominators of
the movement. In short, the last two Presidents of the United States
have nationalized the effective-schools movement.

For those that appreciate irony, consider that within two decades
policymaker "wisdom'' on schooling had flip-flopped from schools not
making much difference to the local school being the single most
important instrument in securing equity and excellence for all
children.

What accounts for this turnabout is a consensus among national
political and business leaders, forged in the early 1980's, that
tougher and better schooling will boost a sagging economy. Policymakers
concluded that central guidance must be given to a fragmented,
decentralized system of schooling. Incentives and penalties were needed
to motivate students and teachers to work harder. This new policy
wisdom has been labeled systemic reform.

The logic behind systemic reform goes like this: If we are to regain
economic competitiveness, every isolated fragment of what we know as
public schooling--its diverse goals, 50 state curricula, varied
textbooks and tests, uncoordinated teacher education--must be aligned
to work together as they do in many European nations. Professional
groups must agree on curricular standards. Policymakers must figure out
how to assess the achievement of those standards because once students
see clearly the link between their school performance and getting jobs
or into colleges, they will work harder.

But the system of public schooling is so large and splintered. Where
do you begin? Among mainstream policymakers the answer is clear: Create
a national curriculum and tests that measure the extent to which
students have learned what was taught.

There is much that is appealing in this new "wisdom.'' Squeezing
more efficiency out of a fragmented, uncoordinated system of schooling
is essential. So is having national goals, since goals can steer local
agendas and signal a culturally diverse people what in public schooling
is fundamental. Moreover, goals aimed at lifting academic standards
assume that all students, regardless of background, can succeed. Thus,
seeking more efficiency and uniformity in standards and assessment
makes both equity and excellence possible.

Also appealing is that having national goals and "voluntary''
curricula avoids coercion and leaves to teachers and principals
decisions about how best to reach these goals and standards. The
message to schools is: Reach these standards. How you do it is up to
you. This mix of top-down pressure and bottom-up freedom attracts
skeptics and sidesteps critics' fear of a U.S. ministry of education
dictating what is to be taught in San Francisco, rural Kansas, and
Montgomery County, Md., classrooms.

While there is promise for local schools in the idea of systemic
reform, there are also inescapable consequences. An obvious one is that
minority, poor children in big-city schools will receive few benefits
from systemic reform.

Many policymakers believe that the decentralized political structure
of public schools captures the totality of the American system. Such a
belief ignores the powerful three-tiered socioeconomic structure of
American public schooling.

Top-tier schools, fewer than 10 percent of all schools, serve mostly
affluent, white communities and send four out of five of their
graduates to higher education. These schools in the Palo Altos and New
Triers of the country already meet or exceed the national goals and do
exceedingly well on state and national tests.

The second tier is the largest, representing about half of all U.S.
schools. These schools, largely in suburban and small school districts,
have decent test scores on national standardized tests and about half
or more of their graduates go on to college. Second-tier schools have
responded vigorously to critics of the last decade. New curricula have
been added; programs for the multicultural, gifted, "at risk,'' and
disabled have been adopted.

Bottom-tier schools, over one-third of all schools, are in center
cities with large percentages of minority and poor children. Inside
many of these schools, by the end of the 3rd grade, a pattern of
academic failure for large numbers of children emerges and by the
middle grades truancy and dropping out accelerates so that by the 11th
grade, those students who will graduate are a small and lonely
contingent. High school becomes a salvage operation for hardy survivors
who have displayed academic and vocational promise.

Will systemic reform through national content standards, and
curriculum-based tests help the bottom tier? Look at what California
and New York did in the 1980's. They raised their academic standards,
installed curricula, mandated tests, and held schools accountable. New
York City and Los Angeles elementary school students, to cite two
examples, have shown small gains on standardized tests of basic skills.
Beyond that achievement, however, these districts still struggle with
high dropout rates, spotty attendance, and dismal academic performance
in secondary schools.

With evidence drawn from big-city schools after almost a decade of
effective-schools programs and tougher state standards and tests, one
predictable outcome is that systemic reform will miss the very schools
that are most often used to justify this strategy. Thus, it is only
fair to ask about the present bill before Congress: How national can a
national strategy be that misses almost half of all the schools in the
country?

Other unintended consequences can be anticipated in curriculum,
testing, placement of children, and teaching by examining the
experiences of those states cited by federal policymakers as having
pursued systemic reform.

Curriculum and testing. National curricula and tests freeze
existing subject-matter arrangements. For example, in recent years
the U.S. Education Department has made large grants to separate
professional groups in history, civics, and geography to produce
national content and performance standards. Yet no one can teach
geography or civics divorced from the study of history. Of course,
after the grants were made, a few people realized that it was goofy
to make such artificial divisions between subjects taught in schools
and scrambled wildly to create dialogues between these separate
groups. But the damage was done.

Furthermore, when tests are wired to an official curriculum and
scores carry heavy consequences for individual students, teachers, and
schools, the official district curriculum will narrow to what is on
these high-stakes tests.

Even this freezing and narrowing of the official curriculum pales
next to the compelling evidence of test-score pollution that has
occurred in schools responding to high-stakes state tests.

"Test-score pollution" means that standardized-test scores rise
because students practice with questions similar to ones that will be
on the test. Raising the score is the goal, not students' learning
more. It will continue because top public officials passionately seek
contradictory goals. They want national tests to certify each child's
performance while also securing information to hold each school
accountable. Wanting contradictory outcomes from the same test corrupts
the very results they seek.

Placement of children. Another consequence of these tests is that
administrators use scores to decide whether to flunk children and
place them in special classes. A common school practice is to retain
kindergarten and 1st-grade children for an additional year, call the
newly created classes "transitional'' or "developmental'' and then,
if some of those children fail to improve, put them in special
education. Legislators have tried to prevent such misuse of tests but
the practice has persisted in states that have tied tests to their
curricular standards. Its effects will be worst in big-city schools
that already have large pools of low-achieving children.

Teaching. Teachers are gatekeepers determining to what degree
national goals, curricula, and tests enter the classroom. National
policymakers have yet to learn the fundamental lesson that the
official curriculum--what is on paper--is not the same as what
teachers do in the privacy of their classrooms.

Consider California, where, as part of the state's school reforms, a
thorough revision of the mathematics framework occurred in 1985. In
this official curriculum, memorization was out; thinking was in. A
group of researchers studied elementary school teachers teaching math
and produced five detailed profiles.

Three of the five teachers made little or no adjustments for the new
framework and continued their traditional instruction, that is,
whole-group instruction, recitation format for questioning students,
and heavy reliance upon memorizing rules.

Where the researchers noted substantial changes in teaching
practices, puzzling questions arose about what happens when teachers
put into practice new teaching ideas sought by state policymakers. In
one class, for example, the teacher felt that he had made important
changes. He had students draw pictures to represent fractions and
problem-solve real-life uses of math information. Yet he still was a
drill sergeant. He taught problem-solving as a series of rules that
students had to memorize and follow. Here is an anomaly of a teacher
viewing himself as making important changes yet transforming those
innovations into previous practices.

In other studies of different subject matter both in California and
elsewhere, a similar pattern of wide variation among teachers using new
curricula and textbooks has emerged. Some teachers follow new state
standards and use the approved text chapter by chapter, while larger
groups of teachers adapt, modify, and even ignore what the state
requires. So if one of the purposes of national curricula is to secure
a higher degree of uniformity in what students learn, a growing body of
evidence about teaching practices in pacesetting states reveals far
more variation than policymakers ever expected, much less wanted.

There is another unexpected consequence awaiting policymakers.
Reforms raise hopes that schools will be better, yet constant reports
of failed reforms have fed a growing disappointment with the historic
promise of public schools. So here is a scenario that I anticipate but
hope will not materialize.

Presently, there is a bipartisan consensus among corporate
executives and top elected officials that marketplace competition will
improve schools. Converting schooling into brand-name products that
parents can buy depends on information. National curriculum-based tests
will provide accessible information on individual students and schools
to help parents choose what to buy.

Yet there will be few surprises. Test scores will reveal large gaps
between racial and ethnic groups. Big-city schools will still display
low levels of academic performance. Researchers will discover that many
high school graduates have a hard time securing full-time, high-wage
employment. Then the fickle finger of blame will again turn and point
at failing public school teachers and principals.

But this time, in the wings, will be an alternative to public
schools that has been gaining strength since the early 1980's, the
renting of public school children to private firms to produce academic
achievement and the use of government vouchers for parents to send
their children to any private school of their choice. I see this as an
unintended consequence that will be played out in California this
November.

This legislated experiment of national goals, content standards, and
curriculum-based tests launched by the Bush and Clinton administrations
has limited promise. We know now that nationalizing the
effective-schools movement, however appealing it may be to policymakers
and the public, seriously compromises curriculum, testing, and teaching
in schools. We know now that with mainstream policy "wisdom'' flipflops
in the past, systemic reform contains no more "wisdom'' than
yesterday's newspaper story. That is the ultimate irony and, of course,
the reason for my deep sadness over a well-intentioned but ultimately
misguided experiment on the nation's children.

Vol. 12, Issue 39, Pages 25, 27

Published in Print: July 14, 1993, as A National Curriculum and Tests: Charting the Consequences

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